The invention relates generally to an apparatus for sorting bulk quantities of relatively small mechanical components and dispensing them discretely.
In the prior art machines for dispensing relatively small objects discretely or in uniform quantities have been devised for purposes ranging from vending of pills or pellets, candy or peanuts, to small mechanical parts fed into a further processing device.
A particular problem is presented for the dispensing of items such as electrical contacts to a crimping machine, wherein a wire is inserted into a hollow sleeve in the back of the contact and is attached by crimping the sleeve over the wire. While the contacts are in bulk within a conventional dispensing apparatus, the pin (or socket) tips of the contacts tend to become "nested" in the hollow sleeves of other contacts in a telescoping fashion. The nested contacts cannot be properly or efficiently utilized by the crimping machine.
A general background of prior art is disclosured in U.S. Pat. Nos. 581,194; 2,53,850; 3,339,798; and 3,593,882. Those patents relate to vending and dispensing apparatus generally, the dispensed items including boxes, cakes, poker chips, one-use soap tablets and foods items such as heated rolls or the like. Operation of those devices is automatic upon prper user procedure.
More specific to the part dispensing art, U.S. Pat. No. 3,240,387 discloses the loading of openings in a disc through a passage from an external soruce of parts. The parts are resiliently loaded into the disc, an activating plunger advances the parts through a feed passage into the successively aligned openings in the disc. Laterally resilient means at the lower end of the feed passage permits rapid advancement of the disc without damage to the dispensed parts due to shock and vibration resulting from such high speed operation.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,150,766 there is shown an apparatus which utilizes concentric chambers of a drum to dispense pills or capsules of medication, vitamins, or the like, on a one-a-day basis. The device is manually operated and indexed by day of the week. The capsules are fed to a single passage dispensing cap from cyclindrical chambers each having a diameter corresponding to the capsule which prevents unintended multiple dispensing of the capsules. The capsules are stacked end-to-end within the cylinder, which presents no nesting problem since the capsules are smooth and symmetrical and do not engage or attach to each other.
The configuration of the prior art devices could not function satisfactorily for dispensing such items as elongated, hollow electrical connector contacts having pin ends. The pin ends of a bulk quantity of such contact become nested in the hollow end of adjacent contacts in an unintended telescoping relationship which precludes orderly dispensing of the contacts one at a time. The present invention solves these problems by a unique "Buffer Assembly" which receives parts from a conventional Vibratory Contact Feed Bowl, and dispenses these parts on demand one at a time to a conventional crimper.